may be so bold, don't go nowhere, 'specially
up hill, without a sangwidge in each pocket.
Did I ever tell you, when, you was a boy, them
words of Mr. Turnover? They was his last."

"His very last?" asked George,
suspiciously.

"Well, sir, he'd been silent so long, that we
thought he was actially gone; and the nuss,
which had been promised another job, wanted
to put him in the coffin he'd ordered for
hisself some days before, when, while we was
arguin', T. opens one eye and crooks his little
finger, which meant 'Lift me up and give me
a tablespoonful of gruel, not too hot, with half
a dozen drops of brandy in it.' That was giv',
and he says, ' Don't cheat your stommich. Heat
horifen and 'artily. If I'd heat a sangwidge
every twenty minutes since I was five year
old, I'd 'ave been an 'elthy indiwidual now.
Adoo!'"

Mrs. Turnover bobbed and departed.

Little slept the young master of the house
that night. As he flung open the casement
and welcomed the dawn, a fancy seized him to
visit the rose-pleasance where he had first
heard that haunting voice that now seemed
for ever speaking to his soul. Autumn was
now well advanced. Not a rose was to be
seen, but George could have picked out the
very tree by which Esther had stood—almost
the very thorn by which she had been wounded—
and, with the idle fancy peculiar to lovers and
lunatics, snipped off the spray, thorns and all,
and put it in his button-hole! Sitting in the
bower from which he had issued to surprise
the trespasser, he strove to conjure up the
fairy face, and, having done so, fell into a
reverie gloomier than ever. He knew that, in
writing to her as he had done, he had broken
the compact they had made, and her silence
(for this was the fifth day) led him seriously
to fear that she would act upon her threat and
consider their intercourse as at an end.

The sound of the little gate opening disturbed
his meditations. Mr. Fanshaw with the postbag.

The butler announced that breakfast was on
the table.

"In half an hour," said George. "I will
read my letters here."

His eye had already detected a strange
handwriting. It was a firm, fair hand, an Esther-
like hand. He hesitated for an instant, then
tore it open, and with a glance devoured the
contents, which were of the briefest.

The blood flew to his forehead.

"She is mine!" he exclaimed, clasping the
letter aloft in his exulting hands.

To explain this satisfactory result, we must
return for a moment to Esther herself.

When that inflexible young lady went back
to her no sinecure at Mrs, Grimble's, she did so
with the full intention of peremptorily
dismissing from her mind all such recent
recollections as were at all likely to interfere with
the performance of her accustomed duties.
Finding, however, that these comprised every
word and incident that in the remotest degree
connected themselves with her late visit to
Gosling Graize, Esther next wisely determined
to regard the whole merely as a beatific vision,
which might, or might not, have reference to
some future event, but by no means justified an
abiding contemplation. And such an anomaly
is woman's mind, that the calm and unimaginative
Esther almost brought herself to believe
that she had been the victim of an illusion!
A glance at her wounded hand, however, always
restored the reality.

"What do you look at your hand so often
for, Miss Vann?" said little Maud Grimble.
Is it—O Miss Vann, how bad!"

"Nonsense, dear, it's nothing. A mere
scratch," replied Esther, mechanically putting
it to her lips.

But Maud's exclamation had attracted the
rest, who came clustering round, to examine
the hurt.

"What a long scratch! Does it pain you
still, dear?" asked her eldest pupil.

"Not at all. I like it. I love it!" replied
Esther, impatiently.

"Like a scratch?" chorused the wondering
circle.

"What did I say? You are making me talk
nonsense, I think," said the young governess.
"Go on with your lesson, Maud. The
products of Staffordshire are—"

But little people are observant; and that
brief dialogue, and the wound that was "liked,"
were not forgotten.

This story must be frankly told. Poor
Esther, despite her gallant struggle to regain
her usual course of thought and duty, was
destined to fail. One haunting doubt, that
nothing could exorcise, presented itself more and
more, infesting even her innocent dreams, so
that she would awake under the consciousness,
as it were, of some accusation to which she
could oppose no sufficient answer. Suppose,
something whispered, George's lost love has
repented of her precipitancy, and learned with
bitter remorse that her heart was all his own?
Suppose that this fact should be made known
to George? Would it revive the sentiments so
long cherished, so lately overcome? Could
she put faith in her lover's present feelings?
Nay, ought he to rely upon his own? Even if
it were so, had she, Esther, acted honourably
in assisting to neutralise all hope of a
reconciliation between persons separated only by the
caprice of one?

This state of doubt and perplexity began to
influence her bodily health. Headaches (to
which she had hitherto been a stranger), and
a strange nervousness, with accelerated pulse
and other feverish symptoms, at times assailed
her. In spite of every effort at self-control, she
found herself becoming captious, irritable,
impatient. This cost the poor girl many penitent
tears, and weeping renewed her headache, until
she gave herself up to the doubtful comfort of
gazing upon the "mere scratch," which had
long since healed, by way of balm to the still
open and far more dangerous wound within.